Random Ramblings of a Neo-Post-Modern Geek (I have no idea what that means)

Category Archives: Virtualization

Amazon Lightsail started offering a managed database service a few months ago.

I took a look at it … and tried it out … a while back and wasn’t really happy with it.

Although it had some nice features, I wasn’t given a ‘root’ (or super user) account and (as I sometimes do) was able to completely trash the instance within a few hours of creating it (I tried to manipulate the permissions on the master database user and ended up revoking all of them).

So I was considering creating my own database server using MySQL on a stand alone Amazon Linux instance.

This would give me a stand alone database with the flexibility to do anything I wanted.

My big concern was network security. I wanted to make sure that only my Lightsail instances would be able to communicate with the database server.

Although not directly supported, it’s quite possible to use the LetsEncryptcertbot client on Amazon Lightsail Linux.

First of all … what is LetsEncrypt?

Let’s Encrypt is a free service that offers basic SSL certificates any web site. The certificates are good for 90 days but can be renewed indefinitely. With the proper software, the installation & renewal of the certificates can be fully automated.

There are a few things to be aware of and workarounds that need to be done.